Letters: Public schools, religion

Linda Johnson wrote that vouchers would lead to abandonment of underfunded public schools for others, apparently a very bad thing because all other schools are religious and might teach their religious biases, along with neglecting science and rational thought ("Religious schools," June 2).

However, not all non-public schools are religious, and you don't even consider quasi-public schools — I attend a charter school where I receive an excellent education for less money than public school students. Also, what makes you believe public schools teach science and rational thought? Having attended public, private and charter schools, I can testify that public schooling teaches neither well.

As for being underfunded, we do more with less at my school. We don't have busy work and use less paper. We don't provide meals. We don't have sports — though our chess team hones its rational thinking skills and our Academic Decathlon team took third in the state.

We should provide options to public schooling, not pour money into a failing institution. If our system were opened to vouchers or free market competition, our graduates would be the most well-educated and economical in the country, prime human capital for industry or entrepreneurship. Now that sounds like success.